


4/4

by moonstruckmidnight



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mental Instability, Murder but it's Art (TM), all characters except Jhin are only vaguely alluded to, the graphic violence isn't all that graphic but it's There and Unignorable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:15:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29824110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonstruckmidnight/pseuds/moonstruckmidnight
Summary: One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. Do you know how it goes, Khada Jhin? Do you know who you are, Golden Demon? Do you know who you were, darling distortion? Do you know where you are going, macabre masterpiece?
Relationships: Khada Jhin/The Concept of Art
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	4/4

**Author's Note:**

> so i would've released this next month for the proper 4/4 but i've lost all concept of time in corona and also the necessary fucks to give, suck a dick jhin i don't care and i wanted to put something out this month (though if i publish something else this month i'll swap around the publication dates so this dramatic motherfucker has his way)

Quiet now, child, the curtain is rising, a spectacle of glory and grief, gristle and gore. The focus is on you. The heat is building, the lights are blinding, purple-red-pink-white, eyes up for the crowd. Remember your lines? It’s okay if you don’t; the art moves without you, through you, out you, burns you from the inside. You’re coughing up blood and one-two-three-four take a bow, now, you sacrificial star, your time is up and you know it. Breath burns in you, a new birth. The performance,  _ your _ performance, is complete and everyone  _ knows. _

You always have an audience, these days, a minor chord of sorrow in a crescendo of  _ terror,  _ and doesn’t that feel good, swell in your ears, one-two-three-four until your heart calms and your smile stretches so wide it hurts? Cruelty is pain is beauty, these days; you slit rictus blooms into still-warm skin and hush hitching sobs because don’t they know they’ll be  _ beautiful? _

You’re the only one who appreciates the art for what it is—more than a trauma, a spectacle, a slaughter, a scene, more than a gasp, a scream, a whimper, a keen. Beauty in death, beauty in suffering, flowers from corpses, gold glitters in last breath. Tendons woven tight, red staining the floors, bone gleams so white, a symphony of gore. They’re tearing up from pain and joy, salt licked off a knife edge, a bomb under the tongue, feel the burn in your throat. Hold still, darling, and you can make a masterpiece, a myth from a million orchestrated deaths.

_ Do they see their faces in the afterlife? Do they see what you’ve done? Do they remember you? Do they understand? _

Your tongue runs over your teeth, count one-two-three-fours until your mind is spinning, and you should have relief but it’s not, it’s nothing close to it, your heart beats ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum in your chest, and sometimes you hate the weight of your blood in you, where it sits and sings off-key and awful, but you know better than to think you can be  _ art.  _ No, that’s for other people, the boring ones, falling into paroxysms who  _ sob  _ and  _ beg  _ and  _ plead  _ and  _ bargain  _ for their lives, as if they could give you anything more than what you’re already taking. What you’re already giving them.

Oh, but there’s more, there’s always more, more, more, more—more canvas, more ink, more stages, more performance; and you even have a consistent audience, a master, his son, his apprentice, and the three of them make four with you. A traveling troupe of death, a captive audience all of your own, a first-second-third-fourth song, bring Whisper to your ear just to hear the rush of air through the barrel. You love it, don’t you, the thrill of it all, the promise of a witness, you the director and them the unwilling actors, jaws snapping together too close behind.

Tell me, Khada Jhin, Golden Demon, son of a stagehand, sire of a suffering—you’re an actor, a performer, get up on stage and make something of yourself, costume over costume over costume over costume. You see it in your dreams, in your nightmares, wake shivering when you can’t tell them apart. A prophecy in fourfold; death in your heart, in your eyes, in your mind, in your soul. Something would come for you, too—you knew it, didn’t you?

_ Did it burn, when you were caught? Did you know it when you took your final bow? Did you plan it like that? Did you ever want to pretend you did? _

A maestro bound in chains of society, and you rail at it, don’t you? The pulse of your madness under your skin, one-two-three-four, everything so mindlessly  _ dull,  _ a promise in red just out of your reach. You ache, every second, a fallen dancer crumpled on the stage, lost in the music that isn’t there. They clip your wings and you feel the devastation of every feather, and for a moment, you wonder— (Is this what it’s like to be on the other side?)

They expect you to live like this? They willingly bind themselves to this, this life of mediocrity, of silence and smiles, of songlessness, of ugliness. They try to figure out who you are without performance, as if an actor can ever be separated from their stage, as if they are ever free of the limelight, as if anything but death will be the curtain call—they take your mask and think you free of the grasp of your art, and that confirms more than anything that no one understands; you will never be free, not that you even want to be. You learn another thing: life without art is not worth living, never will be, and if you ever needed incentive to get out, this gives you reason in spades. 

The escape comes in a flair of blood, scatters red droplets like stars in the air and you are free-free-free- _ free,  _ your gun a familiar weight in your hands and your mask on your face and a triumphant laugh bursting out of you as you bring down the walls, one-two-three-four screaming of those who thought they could keep you here, keep you quiet, blind you to the stage. You see the  _ terror  _ in their eyes, a melody you coax from them with bullets from your Whisper, make them dance to the tune of your grenades. Bang-bang-bang-bang, the curtain falls on this performance and there’s something to the breath you take that forces you into shrieking, tumbling laughter—here it is, here you are, this is  _ where you belong.  _ You were never one of them, never could’ve been.

_ Will you wonder, broken boy? Will you wonder what they lack, to make them afraid? Will you wonder what you lack, that you never are? Will you wonder what it’s like, to live like them, and know you will never have the answer? _

You take to the stage like you never left, like you were never taken, and glory in the screams, revel in the suffering. It takes one-two-three-four jobs to herald your return, spray of arterial that glitters under unforgiving stage lights. Your audience trickles back in—the heron in Piltover, yes, but more importantly those three who denied you your performance. Or, more accurately,  _ two— _ one of your watchers has turned on the other and  _ stolen your performance.  _ You suppose, if you must, you can work with subpar materials—three instead of four, a student instead of the master—and you will turn them into art regardless, satisfy the itch burning under your skin.

Clients come for you, offer you money to take out their targets. It’s artless and base, but you do it anyways, desperate for the chorus that you’ve missed for so long. Your heart beats in your ears, a rising cadence pushing your art  _ faster, faster,  _ adrenaline like electricity through your veins, a descant of shrill shrieking cutting into a caesura as you gently fold a francium flower into an open mouth, brush away the tears with a gloved thumb and savor the way it gleams. Are you proud of yourself, of the chaos, the fear, the terror you leave in your wake, bastard son of a broken star?

Because who are you if not the artist, the virtuoso, the director, the lead; the painter who holds the brush and bleeds red across his canvas, a slash of grotesque grace, filter through the failures with a critic’s eye; the conduit of an art greater than you? Your hands don’t shake when you brandish Whisper; you lost the shred of yourself that doubted the beauty of cruelty when you started this, you’ve lost all of yourself that ever questioned, focused everything into the laser-sharp wit of the worldwide bogeyman, and you are  _ nothing  _ without your art. You don’t want to be anything else.

_ Won’t you realize it’s stopped being enough for you—the blood, the screaming, the pain? Won’t you understand you’re never going to achieve perfection? Won’t you see that you’re breaking yourself apart, you dearest director, for something you’re never going to reach? Won’t you know that the art you’re chasing is always out of your reach? _

**Author's Note:**

> In the end, you’re just a puppet too. Smile for the audience, Khada Jhin. I hope you remember how to take off your mask, lovely, because the void inside of you isn’t going to be filled by performances it never finds enough.


End file.
